Thursday, March 10, 2016

Medea: Two Scholarly Analyses

The assignment: the eighth-grader had to write about fidelity or the lack thereof in Medea; the seventh-grader had to write about the root of the tragedy. Both heard me read aloud from Mythology by Edith Hamilton, and then heard selections from Euripedes's play The Medea; the eighth-grader had to read the play as well. Permission granted to publish; anonymity preserved by request.

A Paper On The Medea: Being a few Paragraphs on the subject of The Media, Faithfullness and love, and a slight mention on the subject of Octopi

by A Nonny Moose, an Eighth Grader

Having read The Medea (Med-EE-ah) on Tuesday the eighth, I am compelled (by my Mother) to write a paige about it. The Medea is a Greek tragedy by Euripedes. Medea is the wife of Jason who sailed the Argo to find the golden fleece. The story of Medea begins after Jason and Medea have had two boys and Jason is about to marry another lady (the daughter of a king). Medea is woeing inside her house with her nurse and the Chorus. She comes up with a poposterous plan to send poisened gifts to Jason's new bride, a diadem and a gold gown (for clarification a diadem is a fancy tiara). Medea also plans to murder her children to wound her husband. As you can tell Jason is not a very good man though Medea should know that it is very exedingly wrong to murder one's children to grive your husband. And now I feel it right to make a compareison. Jason and Medea both say at one point that they love their children, but Jason gives up his boys for an alliance with the kind, and Medea murders them. However, now I compare them to an animal. Shurly they can't be worse!? But as you soon shall see they are. The animal in question is a giant Pacific Octopus. She carefully selects her cave and lays her eggs, tending them gently with her long tenticles and slowly starving to death because she does not leave her clutch. Unfortuneatly, Jason and Medea do not follow the example of the Giant Pacific Octopus, and all they end up with is a dead King and Princess and two dead boys. An extremely unpeleasant and bloody mess of jealousy and vengeance it all turned out to be. At the end of the play we are left hanging by a thread with Jason pleading to Medea for the bodies of his boys so he can bury them, and Medea is riding a chariot drawn by dragons. Unwise judement on the part of both has led to murder and woe.

The End

***

Where the Problem Started(this is a really boring title)

by a Seventh-Grader

First of all people don't go read this story. I don't know what whoever was writing this was thinking but they were really cookoo. Second of all the mother should be in a asylom. She hates her Husband for marrying another woman (witch is not unlikly) and then kills her kids. What....................... So don't read the book. Now I have to write the rest of the page about where the problem started. I think it started when Jason started dating another woman. I think... so then Jealousy kicks in and the nursemaid told the kids to stay clear of Media or what ever her name was. And Boom Poof they died. Blood Blood Blood Blood Blood (quote from Zootopia. Yes I saw it and Yes I enjoyed it.) They die. I really think people should not read this story of hatred and Blood Blood Blood... etc.

Rob, yes, we need to hone the writing a bit here. Eighth-grader could learn the value of paragraph breaks, to start with, and the seventh-grader... An attitude adjustment would be nice. She calls 'em as she sees 'em.

I admit, I was reading the eighth-grader's paragraph and was very impressed with it's length (since most middle-school paragraphs I've seen make it 4-5 sentences at most) and wondering if each paragraph would be as long and complex - since she titled her piece as "Being a few Paragraphs on...."

Love how both use the literary device, "my mother made me do it" :) Ah, homeschooling.....

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